There can be little argument that
Jesus dislikes hypocrites. I cannot think of a time when his words about them
were anything but damning and condemning. Hypocrisy is something that we must
all be careful of and be watchful of in our institutions. Today, it is
difficult not to see it all around.
In the wake of recent Supreme Court
decisions (really starting with Citizens United in 2010), pundits and activists
on the political left have been calling for Justice Scalia to resign. The
charges against him are:
1.
Rampant partisanism to the point
that his jurisprudence no longer makes sense philosophically. It is just a
series of policy statements for one political party.
2.
His behavior out of the court bring
the office disrepute as he increasingly politicizes the role of the judge.
3.
His willingness to ignore the law,
the constitution and consequences in order to render the decision he wants
shows that he has his own political ideals and not the American people in mind.
Serious charges all of them. For my
part, the only thing that would make me happier than Justice Scalia leaving the
Court would be if Justice Alito was leaving with him. That would be a great
moment for the American people and the rule of law.
So as far as the hoped for outcome,
I agree with the liberal and progressive pundits in wanting to be see Scalia
taking another vocational track away from the Supreme Court. What I cannot
agree with is their criticism of him noted above.
Yes, Scalia is partisan, much of his
behavior is beneath the role of a justice and he seems more concerned with
getting his way than getting the law right. But so was William O Douglas! For
nearly four decades, Douglas was the liberal Scalia. He was partisan to the
point of openly campaigning for the presidency while still a justice, his
matrimonial record speaks to his less than stellar moral makeup, and his
propensity for penumbras and wild flights of fancy led to opinions based less
in reasoned judicial thought and more in one man's determination to get his way
and impose his vision on the nation. One thing Scalia and Douglas have in
common is a long string of solo concurrences and dissents articulating their
take on an issue in a way that not a single colleague could join.
I wonder how many of the voices
baying for Scalia's head on a pike would do the same for Douglas? We know what
some of his defenders said. Some of Scalia's staunches defenders in the
Congress were there when Gerald Ford tried, unsuccessfully, to get Douglas
impeached. These conservatives who were so willing to rid themselves of the
liberal Douglas for his politicking and questionable ethics are stunned that
anyone would attack a Supreme Court Justice like this! Something tells me that,
were they around today, many of Douglas's staunch supporters would be taking up
their pitch forks and joining the crowd after Scalia.
It is one of the troubling symptoms
of our political times that the sort of hypocrisy inherent in these events goes
unnoticed. One of the things Jesus spoke harshly about has become as common as
air and as tolerated as traffic.
Justice Scalia is certainly an embarrassment
to the Court and the country and he should resign for the good of the
institution he claims to hold in such high regard. But let's can the moral
outrage. The left is no more concerned with the dignity of the court now than
the right was in the early 1970's when they went after Douglas.
It is the height of hypocrisy to tolerate behavior in the
one who does as you like while condemning it in the one who does not. It might
be a good idea to check your own hypocrisy before going after someone else's.
Didn't Jesus say something about dealing with the splinter in your own eye,
etc?
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